[Zope] var/Data.fs: any way to regenerate from scratch?

J Cameron Cooper jccooper@jcameroncooper.com
Wed, 26 Mar 2003 14:27:35 -0600


>
>
>I tried to run the fsrecover.py script on the Data file (a copy of it),
>and it closes with:
>
>exceptions.ValueError: unpack list of wrong size
>
>So I'm figuring that the Data.fs must be one of the casualties of the
>crash ...
>
>Now, Zope is a new one for me, and really have no idea of what the Data.fs
>is even used for ... is it something that I can just delete and Zope will
>just start building it from scratch?  Or is it something that I can
>regenerate based on information from the file system?
>
>I found the following link:
>
>http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/CorruptedZODB
>
>And tried it, but it made no difference ... from what I read in the URL,
>it sounds like I'm basically removing transactions, one at a time, from
>Data.fs ... what does that affect (ie. what am I losing for each
>transaction I remove)?  how far back can/should I remove?
>  
>
The Data.fs contains your entire Zope installation. Everything else is 
replacable.

The effects of removing transactions from your ZODB are as you might 
expect: your newer data goes away one by one. In general you don't have 
much choice as to how much you lose before things get fixed.

There was (is) a very recent thread on this list about recovering data 
from a corrupt Data.fs with a lot of suggestions. That's probably more 
instructive than any single answer I can give. But -- the simple things 
to try are:

recover from backup
fsrecover.py
export/import to a new installation

You might look into DirectoryStorage for future use: I know I am.

          --jcc